Eggcorn Forum

Announcement

Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to if you wish to register.

The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.

"hitchman" for "henchman"

I put this one down here in “Slips, etc.” because I’m not sure that the users are really thinking meaningfully about the imagery employed. But they might be. Perhaps “hitchmen” get you out of hitches. Or hitch you up with opportunities. It’s probably more likely that “hitmen” is running a bit of interference here. In any case, this one’s hard to count but fairly rare. Examples:

Re: "hitchman" for "henchman"

Even though “hitchmen” at first seems to be a blend of “hitmen” and “henchmen,” it might actually be an eggcorn if we can tease out the meaning of “hitch” here. “Hitch” has a few dictionary meanings, but the broadest interpretation might be that of a connection. In the current context, “hitchmen” might be those “hitched up with” or simply associated with the evildoer.

Re: "hitchman" for "henchman"

Hench no longer has any meaning by itself. The only place it survives in English is in Henchman. Hence (hench???), people are likely to substitute living words such as Hitch. But Hitch seems pretty far-out. Does anybody say Hensman, meaning the guy is just a chicken?

“Hingemen,” by the way, is a dictionary word. English speakers refer to members of the college of cardinals as the “Pope’s hingemen.” The Latin root of “cardinal” may be cardo, the word for a hinge (cf. the cardinal points of a compass).